Monday, July 15, 2013

Something You May Not Know About Me

Ever since my mom got a video camera for Christmas so many years ago I have loved taking video. I can't tell how many times I would take the video camera and film the most random (and boring) things. Like our house.... my bedroom. Or just set the camera down and talk to it. (need a friend much?) yeah, I was weird (still am though)

At my High School Senior Party they had a room full of prizes and they would draw kids' names and those kids could go into the room and pick one prize to take. I was the third of all the kids in my senior year to be called. I had the pick of anything in the room. An Ipod, a TV, a camera, a microwave (o lala). Out of everything what did I chose? The Video Camera!!! Duh! And I used that camera! holidays, crazy college roommate dance parties, and random boring stuff ;)
Sadly all the videos I took disappeared with a bunch of my college stuff that was being stored in a shed that collapsed because of too much snow in Rexburg... (go figure).

Just out of High School I discovered a new hobby. Making videos. Specifically, Music videos with clips from movies or TV shows that I liked at the time (Harry Potter, Road to Avonlea, CSI:NY)


(here's an example of what I mean. Now, mine were no where near this good)
and I understand if you don't watch the whole thing.....or even any of it. I discovered that there are many people who don't like this stuff....but I did. Especially this one....it's so nostalgic to me of books that made me love to read.

You won't find any of these videos anywhere though. I would download the movie or TV clips from Youtube and then use Windows Movie Maker to edit them and put them to music. Not the greatest resources but it's all I had. Because of the way in which I downloaded the clips Windows Movie Maker wouldn't let me save projects into movies. Which meant I couldn't upload them to Youtube and become totally popular with lots of views! (totally kidding) but this made it difficult to save. In order to 'save' them or be able to watch them I had to have every single clip I had downloaded on my computer. If I deleted one clip it would disappear from my video.  I eventually deleted them all for two reasons.....
1. It was taking up space on my rinkidink laptop and slowing it down
2. and People didn't like them...
And not so much because they were bad....although that could have been a reason too, but because they thought it was weird and that I, in turn was weird too. The few people I'd get the courage to show them to did not offer me a lot of encouragement. They'd half heartedly watch and then give me, what I felt, was an untrue compliment.
I didn't continue much after that. Maybe it was kind of weird. And probably a lot of wasted time. But I don't regret trying it. It made me further realize what my dream job would be.....Editing.

Movies? sure. But mostly Movie trailers. Which I wasn't sure was even a real job (not just done by a movie editor) until I saw a movie where Cameron Diaz's character edited movie trailers for a living. Awesome!
Also I have always been fascinated with Videography. Most of which you see are wedding videos. or even filming and editing a short documentary type movie.

After the tragic collapse of the shed on my things I still had my camera and had it until more recently. All those videos were on small video tapes. We have about 7 of them and recently have been getting them turned into DVD's at Cody's work. Watching little baby Joseph has been so much fun to watch (poor Rylee - the camera broke just before she came and we don't have nearly as many videos of her :(

All this rambling has a point I promise.

A while ago when I was having a particularly hard time and was getting extremely irritated and angry with poor Joseph I heard a song that brought me to tears and made me stop and remember that Joseph is just a little boy and doesn't try to annoy me and he won't be little forever. The song is called Hourglass by Mindy Gledhill (You can listen to it on my grooveshark player on the sidebar) I love this song. And so does Joseph he loves the part that talks about Peter Pan. Once I heard the song I knew I wanted to make a video for Joseph of him from when he was a baby until now. But that thought quickly left with so many other things on my mind (namely, school)

A couple of weeks ago Cody gave me a blessing (which I ask for a lot) and in it I was advised to develop talents that had laid dormant for awhile and to get the kids involved in my hobbies. At first all I could think of was Scrapbooking which I used to do. And I have no interest in doing that again. Also I couldn't figure out how to get the kids involved in a hobby of mine. Hobbies are supposed to be just for me....right? And then, as I was thinking about it a couple of days later I thought of how I always loved to make videos, something I had stopped doing but was always in the back of my mind. And the blessing made more sense and I knew how to involve the kids!
I made my first steps toward achieving this goal last Friday. The kids and I went to Cody's work with him and I put in a movie for the kids while I tried to work on my video. Rylee is just not that easily distracted so we didn't get much done. We've also been renting DSLR cameras from Cody's work so I can take video of the kids just being themselves to use in the videos.
I'm really excited about this and I will keep you updated.

The two videos I could upload because I own the pictures. They are picture slideshows which are not my favorite and they are kind of cheesy and lame, but hey! The Family one I made on the plane to Disneyworld!
My YouTube Channel

Lesson to learn: Even if someone is doing something you think is weird.... please support them if it is something they love. You never know what it can turn into! :)